Playtest: Ancestry & Culture - Version 3

Hello everyone!

We are very pleased to present the third iteration of our Ancestry & Culture playtest! We have made many changes and improvements based on your feedback, and added a few new ancestries, a new culture, some additional variant rules and some feats. You will find a more detailed explanation of the changes and additions below ~ but first...

What is Ancestry & Culture?

The Ancestry & Culture system is a new way of looking at character creation. Instead of choosing one "Race", you choose an Ancestry that represents your character's biological traits, inherited from their ancestors, and a Culture that represents your character's habitual traits, learned from their parents and community as they grew up.

Separating this choice allows players to create characters that feel more true to the game world we're building through our patreon Quest Packs and r-n-w one-shots, where there are various diverse societies.

Create diverse characters.

This system is designed from the ground up to support characters of mixed Ancestry and multiple cultures. No more stock half-elves and half-orcs! With the rules presented in this playtest, you can make your character’s origins as diverse as you like.

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Playtest features - What's new?

Flexible Ancestries & Cultures

When you choose an Ancestry or a Culture, you now select two traits from a list of options to represent your character.  This allows players to customise their characters more effectively, and enables us to offer some more powerful choices without breaking the balance of the game.

Creating a character with multiple Ancestries and/or Cultures follows the same rules, making mixed characters more consistent with singular ones.

Updated Ancestries

All ancestries have seen some changes, but some are more radical than others. The Dwarf, Gnome, Kobold and Gatorfolk ancestries have seen the biggest changes, with many new features to choose from!

New Ancestry: Feyblin

A more diverse version of the Rattin, you can now choose from a much wider selection of fuzzy-critter traits, enabling the creation of rabbits, squirrels, mice, and many more.

New Ancestry: Goblin

Chaos gremlins enter the fray! We tried to capture the chaotic and humorous essence of goblins, while removing the implication that they are all evil, horrible creatures.

New Ancestry: Hemeling

The former angels of a dead god, these winged humanoids must protect the dying light within - or give it up to heal others and embrace the chill of death.

New Culture: Hobbin

Finally, you can play as a member of the laid-back farming communities of the Hobbin Hills. Enjoy cooking hearty meals and making friends with animals? Then Hobbin is the culture for you.

More variant rules

Additional rules have been put in place to create even more flexible characters. You can now put emphasis on your character's Ancestry or Culture, or even put them both aside to take a feat instead.

Feats!

A limited number of unique feats have been added that enable you to further develop your Ancestry or Culture as you gain levels.

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We want to hear from you!

Let us know what you think of this new system for character creation, and the features we’re presenting here.

Tell us about the characters you’re inspired to make, the new features you’d like to try out, and which deviations from 5th edition you enjoy! But also we'd really like to know if you have any balance concerns, if there is anything from the 5th edition options you’re missing, or if you’re disappointed by anything.

We look forward to seeing what kind of characters you make with these new character creation options!

Cheers,
- Niels & Rose

PS: These new character creation options will be used for the Stars of the Sea playtest games we’re running on our discord server!

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The Ancestry & Culture method of character creation is based on the book "Ancestry & Culture: An alternative to Race in 5e" by Arcanist Press. We are adopting this method with permission of the author(s).